We are Us
by Haru No Uta
Summary: Chapter 2 up! Momoshiro and Ryoma were involved in a traffic accident and woke up as each other in the hospital... Rating will eventually be M, but is T for now. Other details and individual chapter ratings are in each chapter. MomoRyo. Yaoi.
1. The Exchange

**Chapter 1 - The Exchange**

Chapter rating: K

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Echizen Ryoma stopped and looked at the sky. It was heavy with dark grey clouds. A sudden gust of wind blew sand into his eyes. He resisted the urge to rub his eyes and blinked profusely to let his tears wash away the painful grains. He caught whiffs of sulfur in the air, a sign that it was going to rain very soon. He found the gloom very depressing.

"Oi! Echizen! You'd better hurry before it starts to rain!" Momoshiro Takeshi called out to him, hurrying him to get on the bicycle. Ryoma uttered a reply and hopped on behind his senpai. Without another word, Momoshiro started paddling their way out of the school's bicycle park, "Hope we can get back home before the sky pours."

Ryoma looked skywards once more. The bad feeling was growing and he was not aware that his grip on Momoshiro's shoulders had tightened. "Echizen?" Ryoma broke from his thoughts and saw Momoshiro half turning his head backwards. "Are you alright?" The spiky haired teen tried to check on his kouhai from the corner of his eye.

Ryoma wanted to reply _nothing_ when he was blinded by the glare of fast approaching headlights. He heard himself shouting, "Watch out!" before hearing deafening horns and a loud crash...

That was all he could remember after waking up to a stark white ceiling with a black television hanging from it. His head was hurting under thick bandages. He looked around the dim room, lit only by a miserable light seeping in from under the door, and saw that he was in a hospital ward. All was quiet except for the occasional light footfalls passing by his ward and soft snoring from the other, he guessed, three patients who were sharing the same room.

Ryoma found it unbelievable that his father had put him in a middle-class ward. Not that he minded but he had thought, at least his mother would have insisted on an individual room for him. His head hurt by just thinking and he figured that what he should do now was to close his eyes and go back to sleep. Everything could just wait until morning comes.

A soft voice urging him to wake up was the next thing he heard. Ryoma opened his eyes to a smiling nurse going about the ward, pinning the curtains open and greeting everyone. She then stopped at the foot of his bed and asked if he needed help to wash up before the doctor comes to do the morning routine check. His head had stopped hurting and he replied that he was able to do it himself. Slowly sitting up and getting out of the stiff bed, as he was told to do so by the nurse, he recalled that Momoshiro was with him when the car crashed into them.

"The other boy is alright." She had a warm smile that put Ryoma's uncertain mind at ease, "I can try to find out which ward he is staying in, if you want to visit him." He thanked her and slowly made his way to the bathroom. Feeling strange about what was happening around him; Ryoma could not grab hold of what exactly was wrong since he woke up. The way things all around him were?different, even when turning the knob of the bathroom door. Dismissing it as the aftermaths of an accident, he stood before the mirror hanging above the sink to check how bad his condition was.

He saw a badly bruised and cut face and a heavily bounded head in white bandages. Ryoma frozed suddenly in the midst of checking his face, he had realized that he did not have to tiptoe to look into the mirror. But that was not the ultimate horror he had discovered. Taking a step back, Ryoma shrieked on the top of his lungs when he saw his reflection in the mirror. A couple of nurses, included the one who had woken him up earlier, rushed into the bathroom to find a tall teen staring and screaming at his own reflection.

Ryoma could not remember how he had gotten back into his bed when the doctor took turns to flash a light in each of his eyes, listened to his heart and made other checks on him. Satisfied with his observations, he then straightened up, slid the slim torch into a pocked on his white robe while informing a lady with black hair that her son was alright. She looked relieved upon hearing that. The doctor then assured her that her son had received a bad knock on his head and this was usual for patients from traffic accidents, "He should be getting better in a few days." the bespectacled doctor said before leaving the ward.

The lady reached out a hand and ruffled his hair, "You've always been a healthy boy and never made me worry about you." She must be Momoshiro's mother, Ryoma thought. Lost at how he should be responding to her, or rather, how Momoshiro would have responded, he resolved to just blink at her and not saying anything in return. After observing her 'son' for a few moments, she suddenly turned away and picked up her handbag, "Well, you should get some rest now." She tucked the boy in bed and said that she'll be coming along with his (Momoshiro's) father and siblings during the next schedule of visiting hours.

Ryoma lied still in bed after Momoshiro's mother left. His eyes were fixed on the blank ceiling while he tried to find an explanation to what had happened. He was in Momoshiro's body was what he can be certain of unless he was dreaming. In that case, where had Momoshiro gone to? When it struck him that Momoshiro could be in the same situation as he was, he jumped out of the bed and ran towards the nurse station, hoping that the nurse who had promised to find out 'the other boy's ward' would still be on duty. He ran into someone when turning at a corner and the person's face banged hard onto his chest with a muffled grunt. He wanted to apologize to the person for not noticing his approach but his voice got stuck in his throat before he could say anything. His hand rubbing the pain from his chest stopped when he saw 'himself' before him rubbing on 'his' nose.

Ryoma almost blurted out, _Momo-senpai!_ but his voice just could not break free from the mud pond in his throat. He opened and closed his mouth several times trying to decide whether to exclaim, "Momo-senpai!" or "Echizen!"

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Continue~~


	2. I'll Be You

**Chapter 2 - I'll Be You**

Chapter rating: T

It took me some time to review and edit, trying to make clear exactly who was talking.

Hope I hadn't screw up...

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"Watch where you're going!" the smaller boy complained but stopped when he saw who he had run into, "You..." he pointed a finger at the taller boy and exclaimed in disbelief, "Echizen?" For the next minute, the pair of boys just stood at the turn of the corridor looking at each other, before 'Ryoma', who was really Momoshiro in Ryoma's body, broke the silence, "How on Earth did this happened?" 'Momoshiro', who was really Ryoma stuck in Momoshiro's body, shook his heavily bandaged head. 'Ryoma' scratched on the bandages on his head and found that they were getting curious stares from the other patients and nurses in the corridor. He grabbed 'Momoshiro's' arm and turned back walking quickly to where he had came from.

'Momoshiro' was being pulled through a long corridor and into an individual ward with a bed, a small cabinet, a visitor couch and an attached bathroom. 'Ryoma' climbed onto the bed asking, "So, what do you think we should do now?" and 'Momoshiro' sank into the visitor couch beside the window. For quite a while, 'Momoshiro' just stared silently at 'Ryoma'. Starting to feel eerie to be stared at by 'himself', 'Ryoma' nodded his head towards 'Momoshiro', prompting for an answer. But 'Momoshiro' slowly shook his head.

A moment of silence passed before the shorter teen deciphered the body language, "Haven't you got a clue? I don't want to be stuck like this forever! It'll take ages before you can start to grow tall!" At this, the taller teen frowned and replied coldly, "What's wrong about being short?" he had been faithfully drinking the daily prescribed amount of milk, as instructed by Inui-senpai, so it shouldn't be long before he can grow tall!

Regretting a little for that comment, 'Ryoma' looked down onto his bed sheets and apologized. 'Momoshiro' mumbled an acceptance and looked out the window, watching the swaying trees and the floating leaves. He didn't want to be stuck in Momoshiro's body for forever too. This incident was too bizarre for his understanding, but he believed that there should be a way for them to switch back to their rightful bodies. But, just how should they do it? He doesn't know and didn't dare think what if there wasn't a way.

The tousled hair boy hollered in frustration and plopped backwards into the bed making loud huffs, blowing the long bangs out of his eyes, "The first thing I'll do after discharge is to get these trimmed to be as short as mine." The crew cut head turned sharply from the window and glared daggers at the other. The boy lying on the bed pulled a white pillow from underneath his head, hugged it and started laughing, "I'm just joking! Only joking!"

The laughter stopped suddenly when an idea struck, "Hey, why don't we say we are having amnesia?" he sat up asking. 'Momoshiro' was silent, seriously considering if amnesia was the best way out for them at the moment. He recalled his meeting earlier on with Momoshiro's mother and it seems to be the only excuse if they were to behave weirdly before each other's family.

"That should solve the problem for the time being. Anything that we do not know about each other or are unsure of, we just say we can't remember." 'Ryoma' was grinning happily that he had found the solution for now. The boy curling in the couch grouched at how his own face could ever be distorted in such a comical way and started anticipating how long their lie could last.

"We'll start by orientating each other on our own families." 'Ryoma' started planning for their masquerade. "Next would be school. I should have no problems coping with your classes. But..." he paused and turned towards 'himself' in the couch, "Can you cope with mine?" 'Momoshiro' threw him a 'don't under-estimate me' glance, "Of course I can."

"Alright, alright!" he refrained himself from calling him a brat and continued, "Third is... tennis club..." on hearing the point, 'Momoshiro' leaned back into the couch and snorted, "That would be easier than coping with your school work." Feeling of being insulted, 'Ryoma' retorted, "Of course it would be advantageous for you using MY body for your special moves! Just imagine how hard it would be for me to strike a Dunk Smash with YOURS!"

'Momoshiro' was angered at that, "It's not my fault that..." he stopped and those words repeated in his mind. It was neither of their faults that the misfortune befell on them. They were in the same boat and the last thing they should do was to fall out with each other. He sighed and changed his tone, "We'll have to take it when it comes. Just be extra careful when it comes to Inui-senpai... and Fuji-senpai. So what's next?" he was getting tired. The whole incident had crashed down on him, and Momoshiro, out of the blue and leaving them with tons of difficult problems. It was more than he can take within a day and he thought there couldn't possibly be more.

"Errm..." 'Ryoma' hesitantly began, "Have you visited the bathroom... yet?" 'Momoshiro' nodded, wondering why the other had asked such a weird question and blushing at the same time. The blush deepened, "Are you okay with that?" 'Momoshiro' frowned at the strangeness of the question, "Am I okay that I became you?" 'Ryoma' corrected loudly but was quiet again finding it difficult to explain his question, "I mean... like... have you gone to pee since you woke up?"

He had not. The shock of finding himself as Momoshiro and what came after had distracted him from that. Ryoma was about to shake his head when he understood the question. The horror he felt just by realizing that Momoshiro had to answer nature's call in his body and he too had to do the same, was unimaginable. It meant that to be able to do that he had to touch Momoshiro's... He glanced from his inpatient pants to 'himself' sitting on the bed. Ryoma felt his hands and feet turning cold at the thought of Momoshiro had already done that to him, to his... He felt his cheeks burning and turned away.

Ryoma's mind went into chaos. They had to face the fact that they had to live as each other until they find a way the switch back. But the biggest mystery remains. How do they switch back? They don't even know what caused the switch in the first place. Naturally, they would have to seek help. Seeking help from where and from whom? They don't even have a clue. He felt a strong urge to scream out his frustrations, or more appropriately, fear when a knock came on the door.

Echizen Rinko opened the door with her husband behind her...

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Continue~~


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